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According to Wikipedia, the Federal Reserve was established in 1913 -- 106 years ago. It's a relative infant as far as societal structures go. https://en.wiki

• Danieru 7y ago
  Yes, you are confusing the federal debt with the federal reserve. These are two wholy seperate things. The US Federal debt has been continuous since soon after the revolutionary war with only brief periods of net savings.
  • JackFr 7y ago
    In fact the compromise that led to the location of Washington DC, was one factor that led to New York being the major money center of the United States. Hamilton (of New York) wanted the new federal government to assume the unpaid revolutionary war debt of the States of which New York had quite a bit. Virginia had responsibly paid off all of its revolutionary war debt, and felt it ought not be saddled with other states debt, so as a trade off the new Federal district was moved down to Virginia. When the state debt was federalized, much of it was held in NY which became the place to buy and sell it. Another amusing story about US sovereign debt is the Louisiana purchase. As the story goes Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States to raise money to finance his wars. The US didn’t have cash on hand to pay, so they floated the Louisiana 3’s which were bonds that paid 3% to raise the money. The agent for the bond sale was Barings, and they were sold on the London and Amsterdam markets. So it was largely the British investing class who were literally financing Napoleon.
    • Danieru 7y ago
      Oh those are interesting stories! Thank you for sharing. I would love to read more about such financial oddities of history, maybe a blog post?